Tag Archives: Spider Man

Carlisle Robinson begins What QQ Vol 2 with a lesson for hearing readers in how to address Deaf people. Carlisle points out that the vast majority of hearing people assume that everyone else is hearing and when people don’t answer, they assume this is an act of rudeness, rather than Deafness.

Carlisle reminds readers that English is their second language and ASL (American Sign Language) is their first language, noting that the comic is an act of translation, an act of storytelling in a foreign language. This is something incredibly significant to bring attention to. Most hearing people assume that ASL is simply a gestural form of English, when, in fact, it has a different grammatical structure, different idioms, and is a different modality of language. This means that translations into English can have grammatical differences.

Carlisle shares a nightmare as part of the What QQ Vol 2 comic, a post-Trump election nightmare where racist, homophobic, ableist people are given a place to attack those of us who are queer, disabled, or non-white. Carlisle has a character encounter someone who is wearing a “Make American Great Again” shirt who begins calling Deaf people “retarded” and queer people “faggots”. Carlisle observes that this nightmare didn’t come out of nowhere, but is based on events that are occurring in the United States, and now also in Canada, where Carlisle has made their home.

Not everything in the comic is political, nor does it all reflect depressive realities of being in an ableist, homophobic world, some of Carlisle’s geek humour comes through in this comic as well. Carlisle points out that Spiderman’s web-shooting hand looks like the ASL sign for “I love you” and that, therefore “He fights with Love”.

Carlisle’s comics pages often combine signs, with the character actually carrying out the signing. This is unlike signing depictions in other comics, which frequently use ASL figure graphics. However, because of the static medium of the comic image, Carlisle often depicts a large amount of text on the page, and freezes the frame with only one sign (and often only one part of the sign) visible.

Since Deaf populations rely heavily on body and facial expressions, Carlisle’s use of expressive character faces is important for conveying essential meanings to the reader, providing emotional and situational context that complements the text.

Carlisle combines information for hearing people about Deaf populations with tales meant for the Deaf population to enjoy, linking these together into a collection of stories about their experience as a Deaf person.